


Synesthete

by DaScribbla



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: A Sad Time Is Had By All, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, POV Second Person, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:13:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10126505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: He seems so much smaller than you where he lies beneath you, colorless as a ghost. His kisses are the most vibrant part of him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just have to write Hamlet/Horatio, you know?

You expect him to taste blue, the first time you kiss him, but what you get instead is a brilliant red-pink, the sort of color you’d see in a tropical cocktail with several paper umbrellas in it. It’s so surprising, you forget what you’re meant to be about until he tangles his fingers in your hair and murmurs something about _do you want to get off with him?_ And that in itself is a surprise, too; surely this quiet, studious prince who shows little interest in anything that doesn’t wear a toga isn’t the type to go in for joints and easy sex in the middle of the final week before exams. But you decide not to question it, instead, shoving aside Cicero and Aurelius to crawl closer and press his back into the ugly carpet. It’s ten o’clock in his dormitory, and the window by the bed is open, letting in the smells of the early summer evening. You’re both sweating, and you feel suddenly frightened that you’ll smother him; he seems so much smaller than you where he lies beneath you, colorless as a ghost. His kisses are the most vibrant part of him. Not for the first time, you wonder what your own kisses look like, and what sort abstract art you’re painting together.

 

The next time you kiss him, it’s been months. You don’t tell him about the long battle it took to get you up to Elsinore—the interminable paperwork and _are-you-certain_ discussions with various professors and advisors, all just to push back your reentry for the next term for a month. He wouldn’t understand if you told him, would just not-quite look at you with those clear eyes and ask why, as though he had no idea.

He looks the same—you suspect that he’ll always have that vampiric youth about him—but his eyes are hollower, and when he pushes your hands under his shirt late one evening, you find that he’s lost weight. You count his ribs silently and pluck at his nipples. The kisses are the same as ever. If anything, their color is brighter than before, as though he is projecting something out to you. You close your eyes and get to your knees while the lights explode behind your eyelids.

For the first time, you don’t sprawl in a heap on his bed—just more debris alongside the textbooks and coffee cups and packets of cigarettes and bottles of white wine—but you actually lie _together_ : his head against your chest, his heart thud-thud-thudding like that of a much smaller creature.

 

They became truly desperate in the final few days, those kisses. He has you pin him against the cross in the churchyard and kiss him; does he want to be crucified, you wonder, or is this some strange form of narcissism? You continue to kiss him, as though if you do it enough, it could save him. He pulls your head down to his throat, and you nip and nibble at his jugular until he cries. And then you kiss away the orange saltiness from his cheeks. He tastes like a sunset, and you think it’s fitting that he doesn’t experience it in the same way you do, that to him you taste like nothing but mere flesh, fallible and earthly.

 

The last real kiss is on the final night. Out on the battlements, you find him, shivering the early cold. It will be winter weather soon, although the first day of it isn’t for another month. You put your arm around his shoulders and know somehow that he’ll never live to see it. You rock back and forth together until he rises and takes you by the arm to draw you into the shadows and kiss. He is bright as a flame for you. As wind gussets the trees in the distance and the stars burn cold and sightless overhead, you wish that you had longer. You wrap your arms close and inhale the scent of his hair. Pine needles, though he hasn’t washed it lately. You remind yourself to remind him to do it before tomorrow.

“It’s a rather lovely green, by the way,” he murmurs into your shoulder.

“What?”

“Your color.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, as though you had asked him or even mentioned how you experience the world. 

“You’re sort of a strawberry,” you say at last.

“Not like a forest green, but more gray. Sea green.”

You kiss him again. 

“Too much of this,” he murmurs.

“No,” you say. “Not nearly enough.”

A sigh. “I know,” he says at last. 

You drape your dressing gown around his shoulders, put an arm around him, and walk him back to your bed.

**Author's Note:**

> My Shakespeare blog is @princehalsdaddyissues. My main blog is @williamshakennotstirred. Drop a comment if you liked it!


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